THERMOELECTRIC TELLURIDE MATERIALS FORMED COMPLEX-CRYSTALLINE STRUCTURE BY INTERSTITIAL DOPING

摘要

The present invention relates to a telluride (Te) based thermoelectric material in which a stacking fault is formed by adding an interstitial doping material. The Te-based thermoelectric material has a unit cell in which elements A-B-A-C-A are stacked in five layers, and has a structure in which an element A of an end of the unit cell and the element A of an end of the other unit cell are mutually and iteratively stacked by a Van der Waals force. According to the Te-based thermoelectric material of the present invention, an interstitial element, which is a doping material, is interstitially positioned between the iteratively stacked element A and an adjacent element A, so the stacking fault of the iteratively stacked unit cell is generated, thereby forming a complex crystal structure different from the unit cell, and at the same time, forming the complex crystal structure by adding the interstitial doping material having twins formed therein, wherein A is one of Te and selenium (Se), B is one of bismuth (Bi) and stibium (Sb), and C is one of Bi and Sb. Accordingly, the doping material is positioned in an interstitial place by adding an interstitial doping material such as silver (Ag) or the like to the Te-based thermoelectric material to break the lattice packing of the thermoelectric material, and to form a new complex crystal structure by the stacking fault with the twins, thereby improving the thermoelectric performance.